Author: Daniel Weintraub

The big news in this week’s Field Poll was that 40 percent of California Republicans favor a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to erase the state’s $26 billion shortfall. So far, none of those Republicans seems to be serving in the Legislature, but the results certainly suggest that legislative Republicans can at least vote to place a tax measure on the ballot without fear of being rejected by their base as traitors to the cause.

An even larger group of Republicans — 44 percent — say they support Jerry Brown’s proposal to extend temporary taxes due to expire this year. Fifty-five percent of Republicans oppose the idea. Overall, Brown’s proposal is leading in the poll by a margin of 61 percent to 37 percent, with nearly 7 in 10 Democrats and independents supporting the idea.

The poll suggests that Brown has done a good job engaging Californians in the discussion about the state’s fiscal predicament. Two years ago, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bipartisan group of legislative leaders took a series of budget measures to the voters, they were soundly rejected. One big reason was that the public employee unions spent heavily against the slate of measures because the unions did not like the spending limit and rainy day fund that was part of the package. But the voters were leaning that way before the unions nudged them into a landslide.

In any state budget impasse, attention inevitably focuses on the areas of conflict, and the public’s focus will soon turn to the reluctance of most Republican lawmakers to vote for a plan that would ask voters to extend temporary taxes for another five years.

But even as the debate over revenues begins in earnest, we shouldn’t lose sight of the deep spending cuts that are part of the plan moving toward both floors of the Legislature this week.

The cuts in the health care safety net, in particular, will make it more difficult for the neediest among us, including children and the elderly, to obtain the care they need to stay healthy or to get well once they are sick.

The cuts reduce payments by 10 percent to doctors, hospitals and nursing homes that care for the poor. California already has among the lowest reimbursement rates in the country, paying, on average, less than half what doctors get under the Medicare program.

Cross-posted at HealthyCal.

Democrats on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee passed a budget Thursday that largely reflects Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to close a $25 billion shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and extensions of temporary taxes.

The budget bill passed on a party-line vote and now goes to the Assembly and Senate for approval. Democrats control both houses, and, thanks to the passage of Proposition 25 last November, they now have the ability to adopt a budget by majority vote rather than the two-thirds super-majority that was required until this year.

But they still need a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, and, by most accounts, even to put a tax increase on the ballot, as Brown has proposed. And so far, most Republicans in the Legislature have said they will not vote to send the governor’s tax plan to the voters in a special election in June.

Editor’s note: We’re happy to welcome Dan Weintraub to the Fox&Hounds Team!

Even as Republicans and Democrats fight over the future of health care reform in Washington, California is quietly laying the groundwork for what could be a revolutionary change in the way government policy keeps people from needing health care in the first place.

The effort, known as “Health in all Policies,” is roughly comparable to California’s response to the 1970s energy crisis. While others focused on drilling for more oil, mining more coal or securing alliances with foreign energy producers, California embarked on an aggressive initiative to reduce the state’s use of energy, especially electricity.

The energy efficiency focus sometimes makes California the subject of ridicule, as when it recently adopted new standards for big-screen televisions. But overall, the changes have paid off: Since 1975, electricity consumption per person in the rest of the nation has increased by 50 percent while it has remained nearly flat in California.

Cross-posted at HealthyCal.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants California voters to weigh in by June on his plan to balance the budget. But the voters, polls show, know next to nothing about the state’s finances, and much of what they think they know is wrong.

That widespread ignorance, understandable in a state as complex as most countries, might play a role in shaping the debate over Brown’s plan, and ultimately the outcome.

Brown is asking state legislators to approve about $12 billion in spending cuts by early April. Then he wants to ask the voters to pass another $11 billion in taxes, mostly by extending temporary taxes adopted in 2009 and due to expire this year.

Brown believes the voters will be more likely to approve the taxes if the cuts are done first. But his approach carries high risk. If the voters say no, the new governor will have used up much of his political capital and he will then be forced to try to get the Legislature to make extremely difficult decisions to cut spending even further.

Cross posted at HealthyCal.org

A plan unveiled this week by Senate Democrats to shift billions of
dollars in services from the state to the counties might make
government more efficient. But it won’t help balance the budget.

The Democrats are proposing to shift several health, social service and
criminal justice programs to California’s 58 counties, but they are
also proposing to transfer the money to pay for the programs. Some of
that money would come from tax increases.

The proposal would shift juvenile parole services to counties, along
with the responsibility for jailing and supervising certain low-level
offenders convicted of drug and property crimes.

A computer model that the Air Resources Board used to justify historic restrictions on diesel emissions from off-road construction equipment may have attributed twice as much pollution to those heavy trucks as they actually produce, according to interviews with ARB staff.

That error, coupled with the effects of the recession on the construction industry, means that the excavators, backhoes and graders that operate in California are producing only a fraction of the pollutants that the board believed was the case when it adopted the regulations in 2007.

The industry has been pushing the air board to repeal or at least suspend implementation of the rule, which requires contractors to get rid of old, heavily polluting engines and retrofit others with filters to capture the diesel particulate matter before it reaches the ambient air.

From the beginning, construction contractors have contended that the rule was misguided, would force some contractors out of business and had costs that exceeded its benefits.

Modest additional taxes on sweetened soft drinks don’t do much to curb consumption or child obesity, according to a study released today. But more significant levies targeting soda might have more impact.

The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, could find no significant connection between soda consumption or weight gain among children and special taxes on soda. The taxes in the study averaged 3.5 percent, and none were larger than 7 percent.

“If the goal is to noticeably reduce soda consumption among children, then it would have to be a very substantial tax” said Roland Sturm, the study’s lead author and a senior economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “A small sales tax on soda does not appear to lead to a noticeable drop in consumption, led alone reduction in obesity.”

New soda taxes have been proposed in California and elsewhere. Democrats in Congress considered the idea as a way to finance an expansion of health insurance for the poor but dropped the proposal in the face of opposition from the beverage industry.